engines in, wired up and its running, the 260/6 a buddy scored for me is ****, won't stay in 1st running on jackstands much less on the ground, bought another tranny and my hatred for fedex is renewed, was supposed to be delivered friday (wednesday now) and it keeps getting pushed back another day, tracking put it in town friday........maybe it'll show up tomorrow, and not be destroyed, but i'm not holding my breath on either count as cluster**** begets cluster****.
the pretty 3mm schidemann stainless equal length headers actually do not fit a e34 despite the site saying lhd e34, so that was more fun cutting and welding em into something that's not hard into the floor, headers are plumbed to the cats but i haven't modified my knock off BB triflo to work yet, chinesium polished stainless, looks pretty good but only offered for 525, 540 and 750il, i got the 750 (i had a stock shortened 750il catback welded into my old 90 535, the fat pipes have a nice deep sound) and have a set of resonators from a 535 bb triflo i'm going to weld to the front of the 750 muffler pipes, that way it'll bolt up to the cat with minimal drama, before and after pics of the 456 header, had to knock 3.25" off and change directions twice, the included adapter turned backwards and shortened for the 123 header mirrored my 456, one more elbow got em both down where band clamps connect it to the cats.
the wiring was a hoot as the chassis is a 95 but the engine came from i'm guessing a 89 so the body plug was the wrong gender, and has 1/3 less wires, not my first rodeo, i think i have all the relevant stuff locked down and working (tach did stop working so something is up i need to bug chase).
e30 oil cooler upside down is nearly perfect, early e32 735 OF housing, ebay AN adapter kit plugged into that, shortened and swedged the AN hoses onto the e30 pipes

Last edited by winfred; 12-19-2018 at 09:41 PM.

all america wants is cold beer warm cat and a place to take a poop with a door on it

it finally stopped raining after a month so i had the motivation to leave the house, final stage torqued the head and adjusted the valves, welded in the coil and air box mounts then took it for a 9 mile drive and tank of fuel, don't think anything fell off and the 2nd tranny works nice, my short shifter is a success with e36 m3 lever, delren rail mounts and turner urethane rear body mount, just about perfect feel. i think the o2 sensor from the 525 exhaust is crap and i bought a new one but can find it, tach comes up when started but drops back to zero and the brake fluid light is on, but not in the message bar, thats annoying

all america wants is cold beer warm cat and a place to take a poop with a door on it

dirty and unwashed but its alive
been on the road all week and nothings fallen off, billy sports, h&r's and full lemforder suspension replacement with m5 thrust arm bushings and aluminum lowers, 840 4 pot brembos on the front with 750il trailing arm/vented brake swap in the rear with matching slotted rotors all done, might tweak it a hair higher with upper springs pads on the bottom too in the front and some sort of something in the rear that ive not thought up yet, 4.10 pegleg out and 3.46 posi in, might build a 3.73 or find a 3.64 but that 4.10 had to go as it was buzzing bad on the interstate, math put it at 3050-3100 at 70 (cap's on way to fix cluster as tach is dead, works a little when its below 40* and cold start) and it just wasn't comfy, 3.46s dropped it to 2600. m5 oil temp gauge up and functioning as of this evening. seeing a drop or two of antifreeze at the evaporator drains so i guess a o-ring is seeping and its heater core time, might hit it with some barsleak and see if itll make spring/summer

Last edited by winfred; 01-18-2019 at 10:25 PM.

all america wants is cold beer warm cat and a place to take a poop with a door on it

So the M30 is to end up an M88/3 running a 'Frankentronic'? You have gotta love that!

In many ways better as a keeper than the more 'plasticiszed M60'. All the right stuff you're doing there, glad to see you applying your years of wisdom to build perhaps the 'best ever' e34, eg. Touring/S38/Late Motronic/driveline/susp all maxed. Would love to see more detail on the exhaust you made, not to mention the implementation of the later Motronic.

For the suspension, you can add a fabricated delrin (or even alloy) spacer to add onto the perch on the rear shocks, or even replace the perch itself with a taller one if you use steel, assuming your shocks have removable pressed perches (many are welded to the tube, just depends which your type ended up being) and you can fab up something as strong. People have made 10mm Delrin ones that just slip on top of the old perch but I can't remember who. They can't be hard to fabricate up with a lathe, and a shock to measure off. I've no idea how well Delrin will last back there, but it is probably fine

The front height looks perfect to me, given that any amount of lift at the rear will cause it to drop more than you might expect.

i have all of the frankentronic parts but unless i go wacky with the m30 itll likely not go in the car, i lightly joke that if i get bored it might grow a turbo but i wanna keep it comfy for the work trek, i do have a LS3 sitting the garage if i wanted to nuke that comfort part with extreme prejudice. the m88/3 is long sold as i didn't expect this project to fall in my lap (friend of a buddy tired of project creep aborting the whole thing for $2k with a auto m30b35 swap).
handles good and if we didn't have these massive horse grave speed bumps at the shop not sure id be thinking that hard about gaining a few mm of altitude back, i have the exhaust tucked about as high as itll go and still just barely bump the cat when going to lunch with a extra rider and just the front dropped, haven't had any riders since both ends but i know itll drag with 2, i wouldn't dream of taking my e30 down that driveway

all america wants is cold beer warm cat and a place to take a poop with a door on it

its got 1100 miles on it now, caps didn't fix the tach nor did a different motherboard or ccm, i suspect a ground issue somewhere as the brake fluid light comes on as the tach dies, added electrical draw and cold weather keeps it working more then the second or so it works at start up, i may bypass the harness and see if that gets it working, works perfect during self test.
after a 360 mile 2 day trip to tech school i pinned down about a 5 mpg difference in the obcs mileage and recalibrated to .820 and see how that plays out, bout 300 of the trip was hwy at 70 and ended up at 23.5, i think it'll do 1-1.5 better pure hwy which jives with my old 90 535ia, it did around 25 on long trips cept for one 2200 mile trip where it did 27.4 on one tank with a mark-d chip and a 4.27 diff, the touring is a heavy pig and currently has a 3.46 so not sure how far from optimal i am.
lubed and cleaned the pano sunroof, leaks like a hole in a carwash and pissed the right floor wet once in the rain before i blew the drains, kinda annoying how small they are for the massive amount of channel they service, lip seals appear ok but i haven't checked em with paper to see how tight they are.
finally built my console plate, had a auto one with all but one clip intact to build onto

all america wants is cold beer warm cat and a place to take a poop with a door on it

fixed a stripped window motor the usual way
you want the longest screw you can use without locking up the gear by going into the case behind the gear, maybe 13mm or so, the ones i used just scratched into the back case as i could hear it for a few seconds before it clearanced and ran clean.
got one more to do on the rf, thought i had 3 stripped buffers but the other rear had a bad connection that was stopping it, saw replacement gears from some german site but the price shipping was almost as much as the gear

Last edited by winfred; 02-06-2019 at 10:23 PM.

all america wants is cold beer warm cat and a place to take a poop with a door on it